A pickup truck is a light duty truck having an enclosed cab and an open cargo area, called a truck bed, with low sides and a tailgate. Often the sides of the truck bed have square or rectangular upper openings spaced along their length. Each of the upper openings extend to a hollow cavity between the inner and outer walls that form the side of the truck bed, and have an opening along the inner wall of the side of the truck bed to access the cavity. These upper openings along the side of the truck bed are commonly called stake pockets. Different models of pickup trucks can have different shaped stake pockets.
Stake pockets have been used for a variety of applications since it avoids the need for drilling holes along the side of the truck bed for mounting items. When not capped or otherwise covered, one common usage of stake pockets is to hold anchor inserts having rings for attaching hooks of tie down straps. Other usages for stake pockets are for supporting CB antennas, support structures for tool boxes, or for holding racks across the bed of a pickup truck. For example, two or three rack structures can be supported by different pairs of stake pockets along opposite sides of a truck bed to horizontally support items raised above the truck bed, such as a canoe or lumber. Another example is the Backrack® sold by Backrack, Inc. of Oakville, Ontario, Canada, having a vertical rack that extends across the back of the truck bed and upwards along the truck rear window. Such vertical rack is supported by stake pockets along opposite sides of the truck bed, and can be used to hold tools upright along the back of the cab, or for mounting warning lights, such as a beacon or light bar.
Although exterior warning lights, such as a beacon or light bar, may be mounted to the roof of a pickup truck cab, it can require drilling holes for mounting bracket supports and/or electrical wiring to the warning lights. This often is undesirable in cases where such warning lights need only be temporarily installed upon the truck when used in a particular environment requiring warning lights, such as at a construction site or for traffic control, but not at other times. Moreover, a pickup truck owner typically wishes to avoid damage due to drilled holes or any possible surface damage to his or her personal truck that can be caused by mounting exterior warning lights to the cab roof or to any other exterior part of the truck body. While use of stake pockets for supporting a vertical rack across a truck bed, as described above, may be useful to avoid such damage to a pickup truck cab roof by mounting warning lights along the top of the vertical rack, such vertical racks are bulky and expensive, and need to be fitted to the particular truck model due to different truck body sizes and shapes. Further, warning lights may be mounted to the cab roof using a magnetic mounting assembly, but such mounting is generally limited for stationary or slow moving trucks and is not suitable for some newer trucks made with aluminum materials.
Thus, it would be desirable to mount exterior warning lights to a pickup truck that can be universally mounted to different truck models without possible damage to the truck cab roof or to any other exterior part of the truck body.